Reviewing sector coupling in offshore energy system integration modelling: the North Sea context

Anna Peecock, Jiangyi Huang, Alfonso Martinez-Felipe and Russell McKenna

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2025, vol. 210, issue C

Abstract: Offshore energy system integration is particularly important for realising a rapid and cost-effective low-carbon energy transition in the North Sea region. Effective implementation of strategies that require collaboration between countries, developers and operators must be underpinned by robust and comprehensive modelling results. Intra-system interactions and diversity of sectors needed to facilitate the energy transition must be adequately captured within whole-system models. Historically, consideration of the offshore energy environment within macro-scale models has been supplementary to the onshore system. However, increased deployment of offshore wind, focus on geological storage for energy security, and technological development and investment in hydrogen and carbon storage projects highlights the importance of expanding the role of the offshore system within modelling. This study presents a comprehensive investigation of energy system integration challenges within offshore system modelling, and how these define the requirements of the employed methodology. The findings suggest large-scale offshore system modelling studies typically include few energy vectors, limited spatial resolution and simplified network flow characteristics. Despite the North Sea focus, these challenges reflect fundamental barriers within large-scale offshore energy system modelling and thus extend to similar offshore contexts globally. Key approaches are identified to maximise sectoral and technological diversity, while maintaining sufficient temporal and spatial resolution to suitably represent the evolving offshore system, are identified. We make concrete suggestions for future work in this field, based on identified best practice among the reviewed literature.

Keywords: Energy system modelling; Offshore energy systems; Sector coupling; Energy storage; Repurposing; Hydrogen (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032124009468
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:210:y:2025:i:c:s1364032124009468

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2024.115220

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().